The Only Thing (companion to 'The Right Thing')
by Esmerelda
Summary: Buffy considers her position; contains angst/dark.


TITLE: The Only Thing  
AUTHOR: Esmerelda  
E-MAIL: animus_liber@hotmail.com  
DISCLAIMER: Buffy and Angel are the unfortunate creations of Joss.  
TIMELINE: About a month after reunion.  
SPOILERS: Reunion, the Faith arc.  
SYNOPSIS: Companion piece to 'The Right Thing'; Buffy considers her position.  
DISTRIBUTION: Sure, just ask. I'll say yes.  
FEEDBACK: Send it on!  
RATING: PG-15  
DEDICATION: Adia, because I didn't know you preferred angst, and Shirl because this came out of the things that make you go hmmm...  
  
  
  
  
Faith once told me that I didn't know what it was like to have no control. For nothing to make sense, and nothing you do be worth a damn.  
  
I understand what she meant now.  
  
She asked me another time, whether I still wanted Angel when he was evil.  
  
I know I did now.  
  
Nothing else explains why I'm in a cemetery, in clear sight of my mother's grave for God's sake, gasping and shuddering against him, knowing his fangs are sunk deep in my artery as he systematically drains me of my lifeblood, but only feeling his lips on my neck, his hands on my back, his large, longed for body flush with mine.  
  
The blood is incidental anyway; it's his, has been from the first time he drank me. He saw me with Spike, and I know he's got to be thinking he fed off me. I haven't told him I never allowed Spike that privilege... sure, I joined my body to his in a hundred different ways, but never that way.  
  
Maybe I never will tell him, now; maybe when I'm officially an Undead American I won't care, or I'll revel in his jealousy and do whatever I can to prolong it - tell him everything he never wanted to know about Riley (I wonder if he'll feel guilty about what he left me to?), taunt him with tales of Dracula.  
  
Dracula... will Angel's blood taste better than his did? I hope so. I'd hate to think my last sensory memory as a human will be unpleasant. Not to mean I won't make new, more sensual ones, after.  
  
Weird, to think 'hey, these are probably the last thoughts I'll ever have'. I mean, not really, because vamps think - well, some of them indulge, at least. All the ones I've seen who were related (I'm already thinking in terms of bloodlines and sires, not genetics and parents) to Angel have. I guess I will, too.  
  
If I even rise. Giles has never said anything about Slayers who've been vamped, and I don't know if that simply means none ever have been, or something else. Like, maybe it's been tried, but Slayer to Vampire, No Waiting! isn't possible.  
  
I'm dying. I don't want to think that maybe it's for real.  
  
It feels like kind of a play death, a big dream. Most new vampires never know what's happening to them while they're changed. I not only know all the stages I'm about to know intimately, I offered myself to experience them willingly.  
  
It could have been Dracula. It could have been Spike. But it was neither... part of me knew what I was waiting for even if the rest of me didn't. And when he came, then there was no question but that I would consent to it, yield to him.  
  
Beg for him.  
  
Maybe this is my destiny, after all. Maybe my Calling was only meant to get me to this point, bring me to this burning dichotomy of a man and a shared eternity of amorality.  
  
I don't believe that, not really. I was a damn good Slayer, same as I'll be a damn good - or bad - vampire. Possibly what I started to suspect was right, and they're not even so far apart.  
  
The pain, what little there was after the initial tearing, which came with a shooting impression of terror and intense joy, is gone. I feel almost like I'm floating, and the hands that have a death-grip in Angel's thick hair, holding his head firmly to my throat, don't seem like mine anymore. The rapture I remember so vividly from the other times my blood has been taken washes over me in languid waves, and I can neither resist nor increase them. This is the beginning of the end... there'll be no stopping now. Even if I could, and he could, I'd die before he got me to the hospital. It's immortality or oblivion.  
  
I falter in my head, but my body doesn't agree, and thrusts closer to Angel with the last of my rapidly-failing strength. My hands don't lift for a second, and so he never even knows the existence of the doubts I'm trying to banish.  
  
Immortality it is.  
  
I haven't even thought of everyone else.  
  
I'm so glad Mom didn't live to see what her daughter - her only true daughter - has become. She loved me through a lot, but what I've been doing lately... she might have struggled.  
  
Or not, because it's kind of a paradox. I turned to Spike for comfort after she died, because she died. It was a brain haemorrhage, possibly related to the tumour and surgery. Possibly not. The doctors couldn't say with certainty. Maybe if I'd known the definite cause, it wouldn't have happened the same way, but that track has no goodness. It happened this way. And I am aware I dealt with it badly, but by the time I came out of my daze and noticed how deep I was in, it seemed too hard to get out. I finally got tired of fighting.  
  
There's always an attraction to darkness, because it's so easy. You do what you want, as hard as you want, and screw everyone else and screw the consequences.  
  
In my case, I did Spike hard, and screwed my friends and screwed the whole Glory and Dawn mess. Of course I knew there would be a tomorrow, but it never seemed to come and having to 'go through the pain' receeded further into a vague idea ever day. It occurred to me that maybe I was getting the tiniest taste of what it was like to be Angel, but it never occurred to me to call him. If I'm honest, it's a little that I knew something was up with him; there's still a remainder of that connection that went soul-deep. But I always assumed Cordy would call for something serious, and when she didn't, that little pang said if he didn't ant me to know about him, I wasn't going to tell him about me. It all comes down to pride. Not wanting to ask for his help, even though it's his job now (or was his job), and really, hugely not wanting him to see who I am now.  
  
A vampire's whore. Spike tells me he loves me, but it's usually at the moment when these things kind of tend to come out, though I can't say they ever did with me except for that one time with Angel. Anyway, I think he's got not to try and pull any mushy crap with me. This is skin, pure and simple... want. Take. Have.  
  
Maybe Faith was a lot smarter than I took her for. I try not to think about the fact that when she told me most of the stuff I'm identifying with now, she was also certifiable.  
  
My breath is coming more shallowly now. My mind may be tired of fighting, but my body is that of a warrior to the last, and it goes to war for every gasped, pained inhalation. Breathing is something you never really appreciate when you have time to... it just happens.   
  
There's a metaphor about the public and the Slayer somewhere in there.  
  
I don't know if there'll be a replacement for me. Maybe as far as the line is concerned, I'm dead and over with already. It'll be back to the Chosen One. I wonder what she'll think when she finds out about me... the sister who tried to condemn her turned into the creature that tries to fight her by the demon-man who tried to save her. I hope it's not enough to send her psycho again. Or enough to get her coming after us, all courage and 'I've come to release you'. Angel might not want me kill her, but I will not die at her hand.  
  
Will the gang accept her as theirs in my absence? Willow will fight it, Anya probably will... the group might break up without me at the fulcrum, but I doubt it; the bonds forged over apocalypses and research parties are nothing if not durable.  
  
Though it's not been proved by recent events; I diligently pushed them away, but I thought it might take them a little longer than this to totally give up on me. I first slept with Spike the night of my mother's funeral. I told Willow four days later, and the coldness started. She hasn't said anything, but I get the sense she thought Spike had a soft spot for her, as much as evil can get fond (I realise he's still evil. He appears to enjoy himself, but I don't think my skills in bed are enough to turn a demon to rights).  
  
And then everything came out about Dawn. My father was contacted about his now-motherless, minor daughter. And he didn't remember her.  
  
Thank you, monks.  
  
I had to explain, to everyone... I lost Willow then, in a fit over trust and 'sidekicks', and it's become irrevocable. Xander tried to help, but I preferred to spend my nights in a fleshy, unthinking tumble with Spike. Anya and Tara went when they did. Dawn... Dawn refused to speak to me. To anyone, really. She spends all her time in her room. She's hoarding the photo albums, spends hours going over them. If I crouch at her door and listen hard, I can hear her recounting the memories that accompany each picture in a desperate mumble. I can't say I blame her. To be told at fourteen you don't actually exist is worse than being told at fifteen you're the world's last defense against things that go bump in the night, and that's the closest I can come to understanding.  
  
As I wriggle against Angel, hearing uninhibited, if quiet, moans break the cool night air and wondering absently if they're mine, I feel a stab of guilt about what I'm abandoning her to. Without my protection, Glory will probably get her pretty fast. Then what? End of the world? I won't care by then. I might even facilitate one first.  
  
If I don't have my soul back, that is. Willow may gather herself together enough to peform the curse on me, if it doesn't offend her sensibilities; Angel won't tell them, but she'll know I wanted it, came for it and through it. And then I get... an eternity of not touching, not feeling, split from my new race as much as I was from that of my birth. I'll walk in the sun first, my sire at my side.  
  
I don't know why he's draining my blood eagerly, but I think I can guess a reason or two, and their names are Darla and Drusilla. If they weren't both dust already, they'd be my first victims... I'm sure my demon will leap on the hate I feel over Giles and gorge voraciously.  
  
He's not dead. He was in a coma for a couple of days, and when he finally woke up, they found out if must have been one knock to the head too many... he's completely blind. At least he'll never have to see my body. I know he'll blame himself, but it's not his fault. He was the only one who stuck with me. My Watcher. My father. He's the only one I wrote to, explaining why I was going to do what I'm doing, but then I realised I didn't know, so I threw it away.  
  
Maybe Spike will tell them why. He's a hell of a lot more perceptive than most people with souls, and I think that he'll understand. Unless Angel's staked him already, for violating his claim on me.  
  
I'm halfway into the darkness already... I don't feel at all guilty for Spike's death, though it was always me who went to him with demanding hands and a hot, hungry gaze. All I feel at that thought is a delicious thrill that I might still affect Angel so, that I'm his and he's mine, in some primitive way, and that he'll kill to keep us bound.   
  
I will be bound to him in death as in life, I'm sure of it. All that kept me away from him, and his from me, was a sense of right and wrong, the danger of his soul. I won't have a sense of right and wrong anymore, and if his was still functioning he wouldn't be here right now... and vampire-Buffy will probably prefer Angelus. I'm sure I can make him happy once, and then I can spend the rest of eternity repeating it. He's all I want, at least for the moment.  
  
He was all I wanted with a dizzy, instinctive desire when I found the roses and portrait on my bed tonight, after leaving Spike. He's truly an artist, my Angel, and I made a promise to myself that there would be many more opportunities for him to make naked paintings of me. I determined to have him; to bind the soul or tame the demon.  
  
Of course, it went a little differently.   
  
He was standing leaning against a tombstone in the relaxed pose I remember, and yet he was anything but relaxed; I could feel the tension in him. When I walked up, and dropped the roses at his feet, and looked up at him with tears in my eyes, I felt the tension in him snap, and a peace I've never felt before stealing over my soul.   
  
I never realised surrender would be so sweet.  
  
He took my shoulders, pulled me towards him, and then, so smoothly, his fangs were in my neck, where I'd longed for them. But he gave me an out; an infinitesimal second where I felt his slight hesitation, knew that he was trying to give me an chance. I only pressed closer. Everything from there was my fault, my choice. I could have got away. I didn't want to.  
  
I still don't want to, even though his sucking has slowed and I know I'm nearly gone. Funny, that I've never been scared. I imagined my death would be a hell of a lot different from this, but I always figured there'd be overwhelming fear, right at the end... Angel's saved me that, at least.  
  
I faintly perceive that he's detached from me, and feel myself steadied against his broad chest. Then he lifts me up and lowers his lips to mine, and suddenly I'm back in my body and trying to respond, but I can't, until his familiar cool tongue enters my mouth. Some unknown impulse finds strength, and I bite down, avidly drinking down the resulting crimson stream in long gulps. It tastes good.  
  
The darkness beckons, and you know? It takes me more gently than the light ever did. 


End file.
